Backfield

“ If we set out at once we can reach the frontier before they get here, but what's the use of that . . . every patrol is on the look-out for us . . . the forest seems ablaze with torches."
"We must try it, Francis," I said. "We haven't a dog's chance if we stay here!"
"I think you're right," he answered. "Well, here's the plan. There's a deep ravine that runs clear across the frontier. I spent an hour in it. They've built a plank bridge across the top just this side of the line, and the patrol comes to the ravine about every three minutes. ”

“ In fortification, it is an appellation given to several parts of a fortress, as the face of the bastion, which is the two sides, reaching from the flanks to the salient angles. The prolonged or extended face is that part of the line of defense which is terminated by the curtain and the angle of the shoulder. Strictly taken, it is the line of defense rayant, diminished by the face of the bastion.
Face. In tactics, is the turning of a soldier on his heels as a “right face”; also the word of command for the movement. To face is to turn on the heels. ”

“ It is just such a gentle waterless hollow, like a dried-up river-bed, as one may see in several places in chalk country in England, but it is unenclosed land, and therefore more open and seemingly on a bigger scale than such a 29landscape would be in England, where most fields are small and fenced. Our old front line runs where the ground shelves or glides down into the valley; the enemy front line runs along the gentle rise up from the valley. The lines face each other across the slopes. To the south, the slope on which the enemy line stands is very slight. ”

“ Raindrops hung on the copper wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown. [Pg 61] The village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land between the enemy's lines and our own, and the sodden fields were not more desolate. ”

“ The whole line from Berwick to Carlisle was patrolled by setters and searchers, watchers and overseers, having sleuth-hounds to track the invader; also, many folk held lands by the tenure of cornage, and by blowing horns must warn the land of coming raids. Where the frontier line was a river the fords were carefully guarded; those held unnecessary were staked up; narrow passes were blocked in divers ways, so that chief element in Border craft was the knowledge of paths and passes through moorland and moss, and of nooks and coigns of security deep in the mountain glens. ”

“ The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage. If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the patois of the littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the shrill challenge of the gulls. ”

“ And this was the last conference between the three officers that eventful morning. As once again the advance guard pushed cautiously forward toward the banks of the arroyo in the bottom, Ray turned to Field. "Skirmish work suits you better than office duty, Field. You look far livelier than you did yesterday. Don't you begin to see that the major was right in sending you out with us?" And the dark eyes of the trained and experienced soldier shone kindly into the face of the younger man. ”

“ Very many of our people never lived to know the result of even the first day's fighting. For then the old front line was the battlefield, and the No Man's Land the prize of the battle. They never heard the cheer of victory nor looked into an enemy trench. Some among them never even saw the No Man's Land, but died in the summer morning from some shell in the trench in the old front line here described. ”

“ The ground falls away rapidly on all sides. Was there ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to your ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is always a breeze in the “camp,” as it is called; and here it lies, just as the Romans left it, except that cairn on the east side, left by her Majesty's corps of sappers and miners the other day, when they and the engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their surveys for the ordnance map of Berkshire. ”

“ We all know how difficult it is to find a certain regiment or brigade which we had left perhaps in a snug camp in a well-known location only the day previous, rigged up and beautifully laid out and decorated as if they intended to make it a winter quarters, but had been suddenly ordered during the night, perhaps, to some distant point on a picket detail or wagon guard. These sudden changes in the camps and of the headquarters to a straggling cavalryman or infantryman seem to alter the entire topography of the country in one day, and is very confusing to anyone. ”

“ On the defense, half backs take the places ours have now--back of the tackles to assist the ends, for this is a frequent point of attack. The full back of the attacking side stands directly behind the quarter, with the halves on either side of him, while our full back is 30 yards or so behind his own line, waiting for a possible punt and acting as a final line of defense, should the opposing runner succeed in carrying the ball past the rest of his comrades. ”

“ By daylight the "dead line" of the reservation boundary—the old, accepted line that all had acknowledged—resembled a thin, dark battle formation, ready for the charge. It was a heterogeneous array, where every unit, instead of being one of an army mobilized against a common foe, was the enemy of all the others, lined up beside him. There were men on foot, men on horses, mules, and burros, men in wagons, buckboards, and buggies, and men in automobiles. ”

“ The stern experience of the battlefield has hardened, strengthened and ennobled them. Their faces are manlier; their discipline, far from relaxing, has become more thorough; their courage has developed, and, in most of them, now verges on temerity.
I have had two new men in my troop for a short time: Ladoucette and Roger. They are Territorials, men of from thirty-eight to forty, who, wearying of the depôt and envying their juniors in the field, asked and obtained leave to rejoin the regiment at the Front. ”

“ We were now nearing the battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. ”

“ Right at the top of the spur there is one patch of ground, measuring, it may be, two hundred yards each way, from which one can see a long way in every direction. From this patch, the ground droops a little towards the English side and stretches away fairly flat towards the enemy side, but one can see far either way, and to have this power of seeing, both sides fought desperately. ”

“ Picture him, pipe in mouth, working out the movements of the troops on a large map in front of him. Every moment the Field telephone is at work; dispatch riders breathlessly deliver their messages, the while the Staff are carefully noting every fresh movement reported. Not an unnecessary word is spoken, and all hinges upon one figure whose whole attention is centred, by the aid of his vivid imagination and definite information, upon a battlefield, the ground of which he probably knows, but which at the moment is far out of sight. ”

“ THE OUTPOST ZONE.—For the Active Defence of a position the defensive system will consist of an Outpost Zone and a Battle Position. The Outpost Zone is garrisoned by a protective force which keeps a constant watch on the enemy and absorbs the first shock of the attack, watch being kept by means of well-concealed sentry posts on the Line of Observation, supported by a chain of small self-contained defensive posts, while resistance is offered by a series of self-contained, mutually supporting defence posts on the Outpost Line of Resistance. ”

“ The crest or highest ground is on both flanks of the hill-top close to the enemy line. Between the lines at both these points are the signs of a struggle which raged 80for weeks and months for the possession of those lumps of hill, each, perhaps, two hundred yards long, by fifty broad, by five high. Those fifteen feet of height were bartered for with more than their own weight of sweat and blood; the hill can never lose the marks of the struggle. ”

“ It saves him in spite of himself, for he apparently cannot learn to advance under cover, and a sky-line is the one place where he selects to stand erect and stretch his weary limbs. I have come to within a hundred yards of a hill before I saw that scattered among its red and yellow bowlders was the better part of a regiment as closely packed together as the crowd on the bleaching boards at a base-ball match. ”

“ XII. THE FARM IN THE FIRING-LINE A farm lay behind our trench. Just in front of the farm there ran a wooden fence. This fence had been loopholed and banked with earth, and was now held by a platoon of infantry. Trenches ran to the right and left in continuation of the fence, and were manned by the remaining platoons of the company. For two days now the enemy had attacked the farm, and all through the past night bullets had come smack-smack against the walls, like heavy hailstones. ”

“ There was our forward zone, consisting of an outpost line and redoubts, very cleverly sited, and a line of resistance. Well behind it were the trenches which formed the battle-zone. Both zones were heavily wired, and we had plenty of machine-guns; I wish I could say we had plenty of men who knew how to use them. ”

“ The Rebel riflemen can lie in the trench, and fire through the space between the logs upon the Union troops if they attempt to advance upon the works. You look down this outer slope. It is twenty rods to the bottom, and it is covered with fallen trees. You think it almost impossible to climb over such a hedge and such obstructions. You see a cleared field at the base of the hill, and a farm-house beyond the field, on the Fort Henry road, which is General Grant’s head-quarters. [Pg 97] The whole country is broken into hills, knolls, and ridges. ”

“ I got up out of the road into a corn-field, through which men were hastily walking or running, their faces streaming with perspiration, and generally without arms, and worked my way for about half a mile or so, as well as I could judge, against an increasing stream of fugitives, the ground being strewed with coats, blankets, firelocks, cooking tins, caps, belts, bayonets—asking in vain where General M‘Dowell was. ”

“ We may imagine, too, the shell-pocked field, which, in order to exercise his men, he would set himself to convert into a football ground, with its holes neatly patched and darned, and its goal posts and other appurtenances requisitioned as urgently as ammunition. Or take the signal example of the great crater-coliseum, [92] on which a whole Battalion had been set at work, and which was ingeniously constructed to accommodate about two thousand spectators. ”

“ In the days of peace, when soldiering was mostly confined to a manœuvring space on some open heath, and the route-march along the King's highway, the word "battlefield" had lost its meaning, and was a contradiction in terms in its literal sense. Fields were always "out of bounds." Since landing in France we had not yet lost the fear of cultivated ground, and at every halting-place precautions were taken to prevent troops straying off the highway; and when in billets, entrance into orchards, gardens, and fields surrounding the village was strictly forbidden. ”

“ Since, however, the enemy’s movements may compel a change, an intermediate formation is provided, known as the “half column.” When this formation is ordered, the troops within each squadron wheel half right or left, and each squadron is then able to form into column or line to the front as circumstances demand, or the whole line can be formed into column of troops by continuing the wheel and in this formation gallop out into a fresh direction, re-forming line by a simple wheel in the shortest possible time. ”

“ If the Change of position is effected by the formation of the Open column on a central Company, the caution will specify which flank is to be thrown forward. The Companies face inwards, and disengage. ”

“ The Front is, indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just expand our fan a little more. ”

“ The soil is either a light manageable clay, or more frequently chalk. Here, then, we met with none of the conspicuous breastworks of our old home, but fire trenches more than 6 feet deep, and communicators whose bottoms were 8 or 9 feet below ground level. Many of the dugouts, moreover, were elaborate caves, large enough to accommodate 25 men, and capable, with their roofs of logs heaped over with many feet of earth, of resisting the direct impact of a 5.9-inch shell. ”